1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for manufacturing a ceramic electronic component and to a ceramic electronic component.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, electronic devices such as cellular phones and mobile music players have been getting smaller in size. Accordingly, ceramic electronic components for electronic devices, such as multilayer ceramic capacitors, have been rapidly getting larger in capacitance and smaller in size.
An effective way to increase the capacitance of a multilayer ceramic capacitor is to increase the area where the two sets of inner electrodes face each other. However, maximizing the area where the inner electrodes face each other accordingly increases the dimensions of the multilayer ceramic capacitor. To combine a small size and a large capacitance, therefore, it is required to maximize the area where the inner electrodes are opposite to each other while minimizing the area of the rest. An example of a method that produces a multilayer ceramic capacitor while maximizing the area where the inner electrodes face each other and minimizing the remaining area can be found in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 61-248413. In this method, a ceramic body is prepared that has first and second lateral surfaces and contains first and second inner electrodes exposed on the first and second lateral surfaces, respectively, and then a ceramic layer is formed on each lateral surface of the ceramic body.
However, the method described in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 61-248413 is disadvantageous in that the inner electrodes, which are exposed on the lateral surfaces, are likely to short-circuit.